In Pursuit of German Memory, by Wulf Kansteiner. 2006. Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio
Nazis vs Communists: The Big Historikerstreit Bogeyman Still Serves the Jews
In the 1980’s, some courageous German scholars violated the taboo that forbade the equating of Nazi crimes (against Jews, that is) with the crimes of the Communists against others. The reaction of the liberals and the Judeocentrists was absolutely furious. Juxtapose the Communists and the Nazis? Question the primacy of the Holocaust? How DARE they! For background on the Historikerstreit, see:
https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/historikerstreit-holocaust-supremacism-stifled-red-crimes-knowlton/
https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2023/08/16/berlin-holocaust-memorial-german-holocaust-centric-politics-of-memory-slightly-expands-to-mostly-leftist-designated-victim-groups-gays-and-gypsies-but-not-to-poles-historikerstreit-enforces-holoc/
THE HISTORIKERSTREIT BOGEYMAN: HOLOCAUST POLITICS ONLY. NO REAL DEBATE AND NO REAL SCHOLARSHIP
German historian Wulf Kansteiner admits that, “The Historikerstreit was, first and foremost, a political battle.” (p. 61). That’s putting it mildly!
He adds that, “…the Historians’ Debate mixed simplistic political accusations with high-flying discussions about abstract concepts without stimulating historical research or the production of public history.” (p. 260. Emphasis added). Simplistic? Good choice of words.
Kansteiner elaborates, “After the fact, almost all participants agreed that the Historikerstreit had been intellectually unproductive, and in the strict sense of the term, that was certainly the case. The debate did not settle any methodological disputes nor help find new material or interpretive avenues for the study of the history of National Socialism and the ‘Final Solution.’…With the distance of the years that have passed since then, it is also safe to say that the Historians’ Debate has not inspired any new research.” (pp. 58-59). So much for intellectual rigor!
HISTORIKERSTREIT BOGEYMAN: JUDEOCENTRIC TRIUMPHALISM
The Judeocentric side did not “win”. It simply proclaimed itself the winner, walked away, and was proclaimed by academia and media the winner. Kansteiner comments, “…the Historikerstreit was, after all, never much of a debate. It produced an amazing fallout but never surpassed two rounds of exchanges between the original participants. By mid-1987, both camps were repeating their initial positions and declining to engage in further discussion, especially after the liberal side, whose protagonists were more or less closely connected with the Social Democratic Party, had declared victory.” (pp. 58-59. Emphasis added).
ONGOING EFFORTS TO MARGINALIZE COMMUNIST CRIMES IN FAVOR OF THE JEWS” HOLOCAUST
The foregoing statements expose, as a complete farce, today’s Jewish claims that “German historians have disproved any equality of Hitler’s crimes (against Jews, that is), with Stalin’s crimes.” Such Jews are simply making false, self-serving claims. But who cares? As long as Jews largely control the narrative, nothing else matters. That’s what the big Historikerstreit bogeyman is all about.
THE LESSER GRAVITY OF COMMUNIST CRIMES, RELATIVE TO NAZI CRIMES (AGAINST JEWS, THAT IS), CANNOT EVEN BE DETERMINED!
Author Kansteiner gives away the store, as he writes, “The debate about the alleged modernity of Nazism illustrates that abstract concepts such as ‘the modernity of Nazism’ or ‘the singularity of the Holocaust’, as used during the Historikerstreit, cannot be proven or standardized by recourse to some commonly accepted protocol of facticity.” (p. 87).
Clearly, the elevation of the Holocaust above the crimes of Communism has nothing to do with facts. It was and is nothing more than propaganda.
THE ALLIES FAVORED JEWISH VICTIMS FROM THE BEGINNING
Let us go back in time to the period immediately after the military defeat of Nazi Germany. Kansteiner remarks, “At the end of 1945, the Allies tried to address the most pressing refugee and compensation problems by designating all gold reserves of the Third Reich for the support of displaced persons, especially Jewish survivors.” (p. 194. Emphasis added).
HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM IS RACISM
Top Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer called the Holocaust “the most terrible mass murder in history”. (p. 43). This is unvarnished racism. It implies that the genocides of the goyim cannot possibly be as terrible as the genocide of the Jews. This, too, is part of the legacy of the Historikerstreit bogeyman.
IMPLICATIONS OF HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM: POLITICIZATION OF THE HOLOCAUST AND VICTIM COMPETITION
Kansteiner writes, “In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Holocaust became a cornerstone of American Jewish identity and was enlisted for a whole range of Jewish and non-Jewish political objectives. The idea of Holocaust uniqueness was embraced by the Jewish community, and was simultaneously employed and contested by other groups in their struggles for publicity and self-validation.” (pp. 43-44). As it should.
Nothing much has changed. The German people, and especially the German politicians, keep feeling the need to compensate the Jews. But they feel no such compulsion to compensate the Poles.
The ongoing marginalization of Polish suffering, at the hands of the Nazis and the Communists, is also part of the legacy of the Historikerstreit bogeyman.
